I didn't think anyone really took Sagan seriously except maybe the evolutionists, since Sagan was all about evolution. And I do think macro-evolution is junk science.
I think some people object on religious grounds, but I never understood that, because frankly, Scripture doesn't say whether God created any other life in the universe. We know that God did create other intelligent creatures, including Angels and the living creatures around God's throne. Whether those are the only intelligent creations is not known.
According to the following site, the budget for SETI has been a whopping $4 million for the last 10 years. What is that? A facility, maybe 10 scientists and some support personel? That doesn't seem unreasonable to at least scan the universe to see if you could find some communications going on. And my guess is that there was probably other scientific contributions that came out of SETI. If nothing else, like Edision, you discovered something that didn't work.
At least SITI wasn’t a scam like Global Warming. But it was one more liberal idea that didn’t “pan out”, as they say...